EPA Region 6 Updates Its National Priorities List of Superfund Sites - One Site Added in Arkansas

(DALLAS – September 14, 2012) The Environmental Protection Agency announced today, with support from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, that the Cedar Chemical Corporation site in Phillips County, Arkansas, has been added to the National Priorities List (NPL) of Superfund sites.

The site, just south of West Helena along state highway 242, consists of six former production units, support facilities and an office. The area has been occupied by different chemical companies since 1970, with the last owner, Cedar Chemical Corporation, filing for bankruptcy in 2002. Cedar Chemical manufactured agricultural chemicals, including insecticides and herbicides, which left behind contaminants such as chloroform and methylene chloride. Other threats include abandoned chemicals, buried drums, groundwater and soil contamination, and an abandoned stormwater treatment system.

“Adding this site to the National Priorities List is an important step in ensuring public health and the environment will be protected,” said Acting Regional Administrator Sam Coleman. “Cleaning up hazardous waste in our communities and returning properties to environmental and economic vitality are EPA priorities.”

Superfund is the federal program that investigates and cleans up the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country.

The NPL is the list of hazardous sites in the United States eligible for long-term cleanup action financed under the federal Superfund program. The EPA works to identify companies or people responsible for the contamination at a site and requires them to conduct or pay for the cleanup. For newly listed sites without viable potentially responsible parties, the EPA will investigate the full extent of the contamination before starting significant cleanup at the site. It may take several years before cleanup funding is available for these sites.